ESCAPOLOGY

Feeling all used up and exhausted, you sketch for yourself the perfect escape. In your mind, you go to some place where no recognizes you, and where no one gives a damn how you live your life. It's a perfect picture of a new beginning --- the big city, skyscrapers, farmhouses, and probably snow, if you're thinking to go up north. But soon enough a certain kind of loneliness creeps up to your senses and you realize your perfect escape is not at all perfect.

I remember in 2010 how much I wanted to get my hands on a scholarship for a two-year Masters program in Beijing. I made it all up in my head --- where I'm going to stay, what I'm going to eat, and basically just how I'm going to live a new life in a non-English speaking foreign country. I had the acceptance letter and visa forms all in my hands --- until getting denied of the scholarship spoke thousands of messages to me and made me realize everything was just my "perfect" escape.

People escape because they're troubled, and how they choose to execute the art of escapology wouldn't really matter until they get to the point where they bump their heads. There could be thousands of things that we want to get away from --- a family problem, a troubled relationship, work, anything in life in general. But what we are really running away from is the mere acceptance that this life does not permanently offer the perfect landscape we've always imagined. And I love it how Alex Turner put it all together in "Old Yellow Bricks"

"Looked so miffed, When you wished,

For a thousand places better than this...

You're at a loss, Just because,

It wasn't all that you thought it was."

Living this life isn't easy. At all. And I'm not going to tell you to "face your problems instead of running away from it" because I know it's easier said than done. Just live your life. At the end of the yellow brick road, you sure will see for yourself that though there's no perfect landscape, Someone invented the perfect sense in all of this. #

photo credit: Flickr.com